The invention relates to methods using devices having keyboards, more particularly, the invention relates to methods of entering and transmitting messages containing shorthand text strings or defined terms from a network device to another network device.
As wireless devices become more and more common, there is an increasing need to make such devices operate efficiently in text messaging mode. Currently most Personal Communication Services (PCS) phones offer a text message receive capability. Some phones provide text editing and transmitting functions, wherein a short message is sent from the phone. In addition, a number of mobile stations are pure text devices, equivalent to a sophisticated pager, except now able to originate text messages.
Because the use of a mobile station having a phone or pager form factor requires either a keyboard with fewer than a complete QWERTY arrangement, or a shrunken computer keyboard, the act of keying in meaningful phrases is vastly more difficult than with a standard computer keyboard. In addition, most phone users are accustomed to keying in numbers using a single hand.
A complicating factor is that a mobile station is often purchased so a user can make use of down-time, such as waiting in a line. Since the mobile phone stations are seen as time-savers, users frequently will have little patience to enter messages that include greetings and closings and other strings of text that require tedious keyboard input. For example, for a phrase like xe2x80x9cI""m on my wayxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cI""m at the storexe2x80x9d would be helpful to enter in 5 or fewer keystrokes.
In addition, a subscriber to wireless services may wish, from time to time to reveal certain personal information, as commonly occurs using conventional emails and web browsing sessions. Quick access to information previously stored on a mobile such as a phone number, fax number, company name, address, etc. could be extremely helpful, and perhaps even quicker than presenting a business card.
In addition, some operating characteristics of a mobile station may be helpful to refer to in a shorthand notation. Unfortunately, no devices or software are available to do this at the behest of a mobile user.
Keyboard disambiguating computers have been proposed in the past. U.S. Pat. No. 5,818,437 which issued Oct. 6, 1998 discloses a method to enter a first word in a list of words having characters that match a 3 to 4 alpha character marking in an entered key sequence. The patent discloses ways of providing a default word when part, or ambiguous key sequences are entered. The word is selected following a select, or space-key entry. This patent handles single words well, but is unable to handle replacement using phrases.
An embodiment of the present invention provides a method and apparatus to detect matches to strings marked for substitution and subsequently to replace those strings with a corresponding expansion strings of text or other audio-visual data, even while a user edits a message. The method operates even on expansion strings, locating sub-strings marked for substitution and making corresponding replacements, if replacement text is available. The method has the advantage that lengthy strings need not be keyed in, saving considerable time, when a shorthand string is available. There is an additional advantage in that storage is more efficiently used by permitting redundant text to be referred to even in expansion or substitute data by way of the shorthand strings.
Typically, this embodiment is used to save keystrokes for certain types of text messages that are commonly used. For example when this embodiment is implemented on mobile phone, the user is able send text messages by selecting and combining certain known messages that are previously stored in memory. This embodiment allows the user to enter shortcut code instead of entering the entire message. For example, when a user wants to send a text message using a mobile phone, the user enters a starting delimiter, the location of stored message and the end delimiter. As the user completes entering the location, the message stored at the location will be displayed on a display. The user then completes the message or make specific modifications before transmitting the message.
Another advantage of this embodiment is that several stored messages may be nested together to form several unique messages. For example, if the user wanted to create xe2x80x9cHoney, I will be home at 6pmxe2x80x9d text message, the first string xe2x80x9cHoney, I will be home atxe2x80x9d stored at first location and would access xe2x80x9c6pmxe2x80x9d string which is stored at second location.
In another embodiment of the invention, the display could be in a form of an audio feedback, such that when the user completed the message, the mobile phone would play an audio or audio version of the stored message.